Crowd-fund Kangaroo Court: how are our favourite tech projects doing for cash?

Tracking the progress of the slinky Goblin VR, the ultra-loud Soundboks speaker and Stormtrooper's musical tool KordBot towards their funding targets

Duncan Bell
By Duncan Bell
published

Every week, or at least most weeks, Crowd-fund Kangaroo Court surveys the week's hottest crowd-fund projects and decides whether to spare them a dime or send them on their way.

We're running our installment later today, having been doing so regular as clockwork, most weeks, on Monday or Friday or, in this week's case, Wednesday. Textbook.

But the question you no doubt want answered is this: how have our candidates thus far got on?

• Goblin VR gazed at

• Soundboks sized up

• KordBot considered

Well, we've got good news and bad news…

Soundboks

The loudest Bluetooth speaker in the world had already funded successfully while the ink on our review was still wet, and its Kickstarter programme is still going on now.

As of today (March 23), it's raised$629,779 from1,288backers, against a target of just $100,000. Despite that, you can still pick up a hefty $200 early bird discount before funding wraps on April 3, getting this deafening wireless sonic weapon for $499.

We celebrated by making this video, during which we conduct the world's least cool hip-hop gig, in a public square, annoying some pigeons.

KordBot

This musical learning tool and MIDI sequencer is a much more complex device, but we're glad to say it's had similar success.

An impressive 736 backers ponied up a total of $178,655against a target of $55,000.

That, in fact, allowed Team KordBot to hit all its 'stretch goals', which means ahigher-spec 'Super KordBot' device, featuring a2.8-inch screen and more memory pads, is now also ready for construction.

Goblin VR

Alas, the news on Goblin VR is less good. It rapidly charged to a total of £10,413 - nearly a third of the way to its £37,500 goal - but they decided to terminate the Kickstarter campaign after less than a week.

As we understand it, that's in order to look again atareas such assupply chains and pricing, in order to compete in the increasingly packed mobile VR sphere. It's a cool product so hopefully we'll see it reincarnated later in 2016.

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Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."


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